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Message: <blockquote data-quote="prosfilaes" data-source="post: 7716277" data-attributes="member: 40166">I have no idea what you're talking about. Looking at <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgame" target="_blank">top rated games on the biggest board game site</a>, I see a lot of vicious games, where there will be one winner and many losers. Are you complaining about the fact that these games are more "realistic", in the sense that you have to build something yourself instead of simply attacking your enemy, which is rarely a solution in real life? Or that some of these games are cooperative, and the consequence for losing is that you failed the world and let civilization fall to epidemics, instead of simply losing to another player? Checkers, chess, backgammon, Monopoly, Clue, Uno, Scrabble etc., are all mass-market games that have clear winners and losers that are kept track of.Save games were created because without a method to save the game, a game was limited to how long you could play in one stretch. Super Mario Brothers is completable in 5 minutes, 20 minutes if you don't use the warps. That was all they could pack on the cartridge, so it wasn't a big deal. Super Mario Galaxy 2 takes over 3 hours for a quick run, and over nine hours to grab all 242 stars. With enough patience most people can get through either of them, but I suspect that SMB1, without the save game, will be quicker.To quote the esteemed Arlo Guthrie back in 1972, "Dealing card games with the old man in the Club Car / Penny a point - ain't no one keeping score". I've played a thousand hands of spades with nobody really caring about who won and who lost. If you're talking about direct conflict, Snakes and Ladders, and Life, and Operation, to name a few, are older games that don't involve direct conflict. If you're not talking about direct conflict, I have no idea what you mean by "Many so-called games nowadays do not involve conflict". Are we talking about the likes of the Ungame... which came out in 1973, a year before D&D?There are roleplaying games that are storytelling exercises without much opposition. I understand the theatrical tradition and ad libbing played a big part in their ancestry. They're sort of marginal, and while I might agree that they aren't games, I don't see the relevance of that to anything; that some people enjoy engaging in group storytelling is nothing new, and is a pleasurable intellectual exercise.Around to D&D, ever heard of "stand behind the pile of dead bards!"? That's a fairly modern rendition of an old joke in some form or other about the endless string of indistinguishable characters some players play, where the instant a DM kills off one, another one pops up. Doesn't seem like your consequences had much an effect there, beyond negating any attempt at playing a role. My one time playing the DCC RPG and having my character die because he looked through something and got attacked by a grub and died is not high on my RPG memories. It's interesting you don't mention that one actual pattern in modern boardgames is the mitigation of randomness; it's not fun, or a particular indication of skill, or a real challenge, to win or lose based on a die roll. So randomness may choose how the board is laid out, or what resources are coming out this turn, but not "this person wins because he rolled 6s all game and the other person rolled 1s". Which is a style choice, but it seems weird to praise a certain style of RPG as "games of consequence" when what the consequences are of is the fact that you rolled poorly.</blockquote>

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